Fiction >> Mark Sashine  

VICTORIA SCACCI

By Mark Sashine

       A black limo cut through the crowd. The  Hand in the open window was dressed in a perfectly ironed sleeve over the squeaky-clean white cuff. Each finger was ringed. The soft purring of the engine stopped near us and the Hand produced a pendant on a silver chain. The gold finger pointed at my wife.

“Gracia for the scacci. This for you, signora.”

It was a chess Knight, hand- crafted with a solemn look.

“Prego,” I said.

The purring resumed.  Quietly and deliberately the limo cleared the crowd   and vanished. My wife put the pendant on.

“ Nice,” she said. ”I thought they were here to kill us.”

       In this place of smooth hills and grapevine fields things resembled people. Spades leaned on the doors after a day of hard labor in the fields while their owners were car walking. Rows of cars crawled back and forth down the dusty streets stopping only to greet each other.   Ice- cream was a king.   You could get dizzy craving those giant cones in every window.  I tried to count the flavors but stopped hopelessly after exceeding a hundred. The fruity and chocolate aroma mixed with the fish odor from the boats drying on the beach, the smell of gas and a touch of coffee coming from the open–air bars.  Those nickel-chromium palaces of the culinary delight were dormant, waiting for the tourists.  Only local aristocrats could afford a cup of coffee and a brioche there for now.  Others frequented the trattorias at the end of the car walking route. There the walkers indulged themselves in haughty conversations, playing pool or scacci, the local name for chess.

We were in the cradle of the Southern European chess school famous for the brilliant attack strategies. They didn’t produce any significant players in the modern times though.  After watching through the ice- cream circle one could understand the reason: people were too lively here.  What do I remember from my chess past? Endless nights full of cheap cigarette smoke, boring tournaments where I worked as a demonstrator moving pieces for hours on the hanging boards waiting for that one   move, a brilliant spark in dreary clouds.  I would trade them all for one chocolate cone.

       There was no treat for me.  Women were sometimes offered perks but not men.  We were the UN children.  We had allowances to rent the accommodations and not to starve. Sit tight.  Keep out of trouble. Wait for the blue letter.

       “Hey, they play chess there.  You play good.  Maybe we can win some money?  You and me, huh?”

       “ Sorry, man. I don’t gamble.”

       “Start changing your habits at the gates of capitalism. Don’t you need money? They don’t pay you for watching people read those papers, do they?”

       He was right, my fellow- refugee. I was the blue letter delivery boy.  The letter could bring a great joy or a great sorrow.  If a family was accepted to the country of their desire their happiness and gratitude were overwhelming.  But the logic of the process was elusive and mysterious. An anonymous force would scoop the people from their place of living, tear off the roots, process them through a nameless bureaucratic machine and stash them into the damaged goods basket. After that they are picked out whenever they are lucky.  Buyers negotiated the prices and peeled of the extra skin.  Sometimes only part of the family was accepted and sometimes everyone was rejected. 

       Our blue letter hadn’t arrived yet. We had other things to worry about. The tourist season was rapidly approaching and the homeowner wanted us out so that he could prepare the villa for Americans. That would be ironic to meet an American on the street, myself wondering homeless, and ask him for money as a former tenant of the villa. Homelessness was very real and we had to find something fast. The natives got tired of our hungry looks...  There were no apartments for rent, no affitazi for us.

        I dismounted my bicycle at one of the crowded cafes at the beach line.

“Hey, signores, parlare Inglese? Anyone speaks English?”

They were in no hurry. At last one fellow finished his dessert and put down the napkin.

        “What do you want?”

        “To entertain you.”

        “Are you a woman?  What you talk about?”

        “You have a scacci computer, a chess computer here. I’ll beat it in the first game.”

        “This is the best system soldi can buy.”

         “I’ll beat it playing blind, without looking at the board. You will interpret the moves.”

         “Porco maladetto, you crazy? No one can do that.”

         “I will do that.”

          A man in the corner interfered. He was powerfully built, with broad shoulders and bulging muscles. One hand was crippled and there were numerous scars on his face and palms. I saw him before. Early in the morning he worked on his fishing boat with a bunch of other guys.  He placed a cup of coffee in front of me and started talking with the others.  I indulged myself slowly to the last drop.

“You play,” pitch – black eyes of the fisherman rotated in the orbits like Chinese balls, “No soldi.”

       “I don’t want money. If I win you get an apartment for my family here, in the village for as long as we stay. No evictions.”

“You play. Scacci benissimo. You play and you win. Domani.”

“Tomorrow evening then. How about some of that cake now?”

“Adeso no. Not now.  Domani, tomorrow, when you play. Now you just have some coffee. Me your manager.”

“I see. You want to keep me in the fighting spirits.”

       I took another cup of coffee, drank it this time in one gulp and mounted the bike.  The last blue letter had to be delivered.

        A man was alone when he opened the door. He was tall and slim with the half-scared, half- defiant look in his eyes. We all had that look. He tore the envelope, read the letter and tossed it at me.

        “You, Tanat.”

        “What?”

       “It is the ancient Greek God of Death. Don’t you know how they call you here? I have vodka. Wanna drink with me?”

        We drank in silence. No toasts, no lamentations. He was young; maybe he would find a woman to comfort him or do something else.

“Hey, Tanat,” he said, “Ever considered a Foreign Legion?”

“What’s that?”

“The French have a regiment they recruit from the foreigners only. No questions asked.”

“I have a family.”

“Poor bastard.  To your hopes then.  If you get a rejection you know where to find me.”

       My manager took care of advertising. When I came next day the place was packed.  People sprawled over the counter, leaned against the walls, sat on the stairs and smoked, smoked, smoked.  A computerized board was placed in the middle of the hall, so that everyone could see it.  A small table facing the bare wall was for me.  There was a cup of coffee and a piece of cake on it. An electronic board screen on another wall was showing the moves to the people.  Money passed hands back and forth.

       “The screen displays the odds after every move,” said my manager.

       “Check the batteries.” I said.

        I zipped the most delicious coffee I ever tasted and took my first bite of the cake.

        “There is more,” the manager said. “Your move.”

          After three coffees passions started to rise. A brief recess was announced. I stared at the decorative bottles over the counter.

“I am not tired.” I said.

“Santa Madonna, the computer shows that its odds are rising steadily.”

“Are you losing money?”

“Not if you win. But will you win?”

“You play chess?”

“Piccolo. A little.”

“When you go fishing the odds are always against you, right? The fish doesn’t   have to be caught. What drives you to go for it anyway?”

“An instinct, I guess”

“It is the same here.”

I saw my wife through the smoke and offered her a piece of cake.

“Compliments of the establishment,” I said.

“They told me you are here,” she said. “What is that you are doing?”

“Playing. If I win they will find a place for us to stay. I play a’ lauvegle, blind, pardon my French. That screen shows them the odds.”

“It shows a 70 percent chance of winning for the computer.”

“Good. This is not the Deep Blue, you know.”

You don’t have a chance against big computers unless you are a grandmaster. Their memory capacity and heuristics are too powerful. This kind however, was a primitive program operating operated on the materialistic criteria. Thus, it should be greedy, eager to grab pieces and space.  My chance was to turn an advantage into a disadvantage, to make its greed an unstoppable craving, an obsession, leading to its demise.

“Tell me the score.”

       “Eighty to twenty in his favor,” my wife said. She now had a cup of coffee too.  Beside her my manager hovered restlessly,  murmuring to himself.

“I will lose all my soldi if the computer wins!”

“Relax, man, the coffee is doing its job. Just collect the bids.”

 It wasn’t so bad.  I estimated the position to be close to equal.  But I should not let   it to the full equality. This is the Lasker’s strategy. The immigrant was famous for making the games deliberately overcomplicated, even to his disadvantage, so that his powerful personality and persistence made it possible to overcome the opponent psychologically. In my case it was a greedology, testing the limits of the machine’s appetite.  The secret was to maintain the instability.

“Something is happening,” said my wife. ”The electronic tabloid is flashing and there are words appearing.  I don’t understand them. Oh  boy, what’s that?”

 Voices of the people all shouting at the same time mixed with the rumbling of glasses and cups thrown on the floor. The old dog that slept there since   World War II jumped up and started barking.  My manager grabbed my wife and started to kiss her.

“Excusato,” he panted between the kisses. “Forgive me. The machine resigned.  You won!”

A group of men in suites and ties approached us.  They were waving papers and making angry gestures.

“They lost money and don’t understand why it happened. The computer was optimistic all the time and then it unexpectedly resigned. They think it is broken or the game was fixed.”

“Do they play scacci?”

“ Si,  like me.”

“Let me show them. Give me a piece of paper, please.”

        We sat together around the chess board. I felt myself among the Knights of the Round Table with their swords drawn.

“This is called a tree of thought.” I said, drawing. “The computer thinks linearly. Its tree grows up   protruding the branches towards the sun. Once   it started it has an irresistible strife to expand upwards.  The human brain works more like ivy. It sprawls around, spirals, goes back, reconsiders and builds feedback. The computer craves   simplicity; the human player   gains on the controversy.  See, there are at least four ways for me to win.”

A burly man suddenly slapped me on the shoulder. “Human, eh?  Better than machina, bene! People mean something in this world!  Scacci not for the machines. Signora, your husband is a hero!”

       “I know,” my wife said.

       “Will you find me una appartamento?” I asked.

      “Manifici  appartamento. Adeso, now! Which do you prefer, the one on the beach or anywhere else?”

       “We want the one on the beach, please,” my wife said suddenly.

       “Bene. You come back here domani, tomorrow. Cakes for our victor and familia!”

       “You won’t believe it,” my wife whispered, “They are preparing the food packages. I overheard them talking about our kids, all the kids.  How come they know?”

       We got a decent place on the beach next day.  At nights we could sit on the beach and look at the sea. It was a magnificent sunset when it hit me.

“Victoria,” I said.

“You speak like a native,” my wife said.

        I looked at the promenade. Cars were moving in their eternal slow motion, the way buggies were doing that before for hundreds of years.  Only this time they were even slower because of kids on every corner. Kids from the refugee families were licking that delicious, flavorful, multicolored ice- cream for the first time in their lives. And it was fun.

  “Whenever we go we have no choice but to become natives. If not us, our kids will. Ice- cream has a great magic in it.”

        “It is irresistible,” my wife said. 

© Mark Sashine, 2003. All Rights Reserved.

Mark Sashine was born in Russia in 1956. His family immigrated to the US in 1989, and they now live in Connecticut. Mark holds a PhD, Professional Engineering license, and works as an engineer. In 2002 he graduated from the Breaking  Into Print Course of study in the Long Ridge Writer's Group in Connecticut. You can reach him at spockovich@att.net
 

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